Javert's Letter
by Buffintruda
Summary: Years after the Tortallan-French exchange program, Beka receives a letter from Javert. This is a sequel to "The French Dog" on Gingehfish's profile.


**This is a sequel to a story I co-wrote with Gingehfish, The French Dog. You should probably read that first. Much of the first paragraph is taken from the Les Miserables where Javert leaves a note for the other police to read, before committing suicide.**

_A FEW OBSERVATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE. In the first place: I beg Monsieur le Prefet to cast his eyes on this. Secondly: I ask that the attached letter is delivered to Madame Rebakah Cooper of Corus, Tortall, to the Lower City Guardhouse on Jane Street. Thirdly: prisoners, on arriving after examination..._

_To Madame Rebakah Cooper, _

_I apologize for my behavior in Tortall, a few years ago, during the exchange program. I was wrong to disregard the customs of your people, no matter what my personal beliefs were. Disobeying your orders like I did was a mistake. _

_That however, is not the reason I write to you. If that were the case, I would have written years ago. Something has happened to me, and it seems like the whole world has turned upside down. Perhaps you were right all along. A criminal whom I have hunted for years was given the opportunity to kill me, and yet he released me. Now I have the capability to arrest him. I _should _imprison him. I know his address, and it would be so simple to return him to the law, for I know he will not put up a fight, yet at the same time, I cannot. This malefactor saved my life, he is good, I mustn't t force him to a lifetime of slavery. Does that make me heinous, no better than a thief, making deals with criminals?_

_The law is not as unswayable and inflexible as I once thought it was. I do not know what is right or wrong any more. What is right may not necessarily be what is the law. I realize now that there is more than duty, there is mercy and pity, but which one is right? Which one should I follow? Is everything I have lived for wrong? I feel like I am being torn in half. There are two paths, each contradicts the other, I have to chose one but I cannot chose either, both are right, and yet both are wrong. I am lost in world of gray and blurred lines, of indecision and uncertainty, that world that I had once thought was black and white, with only one correct way to live, with everything else wrong, bad. How do you survive in such a complicated mess of morals?_

_But back to the original intention of this letter, I wish to let you know that I have learned that this world is so much more than what I thought it was, that I was wrong. You are correct. I would have done better to take into consideration your views and beliefs. The exchange program's purpose was to teach us law enforcers something new, but I refused to learn or even contemplate this, strange, foreign way of doing things. If I had, I would not have been where I am today, but now it is too late._

_ Sincerest apologies,_

_ Police Inspector Javert_

...

Beka put down the letter, that she had received a few hours ago. She recalled the uptight foreign Dog. As much as she resented and disapproved of him, it was nice to know that he had finally learned that the law, while important and necessary, wasn't everything. That was the thing she had hated most about him- the fact that he was so stubborn, that he couldn't allow for any possibility of sympathy or leniency. Now, perhaps, she could forgive him for the bread thief incident. She actually almost pitied the man.

Beka had lived her life knowing mercy and forgiveness. Javert on the other hand, seemed to truly believe that the law was the only option, that it was right with no room for error. It must be horrible having everything you ever thought was good and just to be proved wrong. And judging by his letter, he was feeling awful. Beka could only hope that he would get accustomed to this new way of thinking and help make France a better place, more fair and just. If all the other Dogs over there were like him, it definitely needed it.


End file.
